Infertility

One in every eight couples is unable to conceive children by natural means.

Other potential clients are gay couples who want children.

The baby industry, Spar notes, expanded beneath the radar of most business analysts.

This is, she says, partly because clients generally recoil from the notion that their families are - at least in part - the result of "market activity." In addition, there has been little call for governmental regulation of this new and unique business.

The development of the baby industry took off, says Spar, in 1978 with the birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby.

Today desperate couples go through round after round of in vitro fertilization (IVF) at an average cost of $12,400 per try, even though the success rate hovers around 27 percent and drops as low as 9 percent if the woman is over 40.

Those who do give up can turn to adoption, along with about 120,000 other U.S.

families each year, paying out up to $35,000 per child.

A few countries have recently passed laws that constrain the use of reproductive technologies.

Italy passed legislation that prohibits sterile, gay, or single adults from using donor eggs or surrogate mothers.

In Germany, egg transfer of any sort is illegal, as are surrogacy and treatments that involve manipulating the human embryo.

The United States maintains a controversial ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

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